#21 Unicorn or Not

+ MIĶELIS

Inspiration

Don't know how to build a financial plan for the business idea you've dreamt of last night? In need of a friend, who could help with initial financial projections? Or tired of the most difficult "back-of-a-napkin" calculations to check whether your idea has at least some potential to become profitable?

What it does

We've created an easy-to-understand tool that generates a financial plan, suggestions, risk assesment, success factors and shows key assumptions in seconds. More advanced projections behind a paywall.

How we built it

We built it from scratch mainly using claude.ai and v0.dev. The main financial projections were built in excel, which were later integrated in the backend. Along the way we of course contacted our best friends Chat.gpt and Gemini.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge was to build a financial model that actually works and is useful. While it was clear, we wouldn't be able to build a model that fits every case, every industry we still wanted to make the demo that can be useful for some. So we narrowed the choice for creating a prototype for the e-commerce industry, with built the financial model around that. It still has some issues and it is still not "KPMG-level", but we could get there in due time.

On the technical side, the integration and prompt engineering was time-consuming, sometimes confusing, but we managed to make the demo work which was the initial goal. We definitely learned a lot.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We stayed sane (?), had fun along the way and learned a lot from each other. Also, we are pretty happy with the model we've built. It is truly inspiring how far AI tools can get us in such a short time.

What we learned

It was a nice practice. Starting from just an idea, then exploring all the options out there and then actually building something that works the way it was intended... very satisfying....Also, to build such a web tool, we really needed to work as a team. Not all of us were familiar with each other before we started. So there are a lot of take-a-ways.

What's next for Unicorn or Not

The next steps involve refining the prototype, followed by validating the AI model and launching it on ProductHunt to generate user traction and fine-tune our strategy, service and pricing. Afterwards, we’ll attract experts, start establishing partnerships and start fundraising.